Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an image capturing apparatus.
Description of the Related Art
In image capturing apparatuses such as digital cameras that capture images using solid-state image sensors such as CMOS and CCD image sensors, there are cases where a defective pixel is included in a portion of the pixels on the solid-state image sensor.
A normal pixel without any defects generates an electric signal by being exposed to light and outputs a pixel value that corresponds to the amount of received light. On the other hand, a defective pixel generates an electric signal even without being exposed to light, and thus outputs a pixel value that includes defective elements apart from the amount of received light.
As a measure against such a defective pixel, in Japanese Patent Laid-Open No. 8-18873, correction processing is performed such that the influence of a defective pixel is mitigated by capturing a light-shielded image after capturing a subject image and performing processing for subtracting the light-shielded image from the subject image.
Also, Japanese Patent No. 4604307 proposes an image sensor structured with a curved image capturing surface. In this image sensor, curving the image capturing surface makes it possible to receive light rays from the subject that are incident on the image capturing surface in an approximately orthogonal direction, regardless of the positioning of the image capturing surface.
However, in the above Japanese Patent Laid-Open No. 8-18873, there is a need to increase the charge accumulation time of the light-shielded image in order to increase the defective pixel detection accuracy, and therefore there is a concern that the time lag that occurs when normal image capture is performed will become excessively long.